Precious Against A Precious Thing

From the New York Times bestselling author of Let’s Take the Long Way Home comes a moving memoir about how the women’s movement revolutionized and saved her life, from the 1960s to the Me Too era. In a voice as candid as it is evocative, Gail Caldwell traces a path from her west Texas girlhood through her emergence as a young daredevil, then as a feminist—a journey that reflected seismic shifts in the culture itself. Caldwell’s travels took her to California and Mexico and dark country roads, and the dangers she encountered were rivaled only by the personal demons she faced. Bright Precious Thing is the captivating story of a woman’s odyssey, her search for adventure giving way to something more profound: the evolution of a writer and a woman, a struggle to embrace one’s life as a precious thing. Told against a contrasting backdrop of the present day, including the author’s friendship with a young neighborhood girl, Bright Precious Thing unfolds with the same heart and narrative grace of Caldwell’s Let’s Take the Long Way Home, called “a lovely gift to readers” by The Washington Post. Bright Precious Thing is a book about finding, then protecting, what we cherish most.

Success, wealth, respect are never enough. Until her. She sees a man, not his reputation or disability. Will she stay when even his name is a lie? Benjamin Prescott Roth is his own man. Everything he has -- possessions, wealth, prestige, recognition for his accomplishments -- he earned. On his own. His deafness never defined him, but his father's rejection did. "You'll never amount to anything..." Every accomplishment has been to prove his father wrong. Then Jewell Kincaid is hired as his assistant and puts him in his place, and Benjamin Roth is a lost man. Jewell is breathtaking, feisty, intelligent, independent, and so much more than an assistant to him. She is everything Benjamin needs, but never knew he wanted. She gets past his walls without even trying. She makes him happy. But the fantasy can only last so long. When the foundation of his life crumbles, Jewell is there. Holding his hand. If his life is a lie, if every battle has been for nothing, if he can't accept who he really is, how can she? When the truth is a lie, what is there to offer her?

A gorgeous, enthralling and intricate mystery, with love, life and fashion entwining in a story of a mysterious beaded collar and the young woman who finds it. One for fans of Kate Morton. 'Clothes - particularly vintage and antique ones - are my weakness' Kelly Doust Spinning her love of stories, vintage fashion and frocks into an enchanting and enthralling novel of mothers and daughters, marriage, families and desire, bestselling author Kelly Doust's Precious Things is a story about how we so often reach out for the sparkly, shiny things (and people) we desire, only to realise - in the nick of time - that the most precious things are the ones we've had with us all along. Maggie is an auctioneer living in modern-day London, who comes across an intriguing crumpled, neglected beading collar in a box of old junk, and sets out on an unexpected mission to resucitate it to its original glittering glory. On a hunt to uncover its secret and elusive past, she discovers more about its journey through time in the hands of the women who made it, loved it, desired it and lost it. Maggie has a journey of her own too. Juggling a demanding job, a clingy young child and a rebellious stepdaughter, and with her once-solid marriage foundering under the pressure of a busy life, Maggie has to find out the hard way that you can't always get what you want... but sometimes, you're lucky enough to get precisely what you need. Kelly Doust is the bestselling author of a number of books on craft and fashion, including Minxy Vintage and A Life in Frocks. She's written for Vogue and Sunday Life magazine, and worked in the UK and Hong Kong. She now lives in Sydney. 'Precious Things tells the compelling story of a modern woman while weaving the fascinating and mysterious stories of many women from the past two centuries. What links each of them is a beautiful, precious thing - a bejeweled and mysterious coronet ... A wonderful and unusual story... an impressive debut.' Good Reading 'Wonderful storytelling - I was betwitched' Charlotte Smith, bestselling author of Dreaming of Dior 'Beautifully written and downright enchanting. Every character had a story and each story connected and drew me in to the point that I couldn't put the book down until I found out all their endings.' mybookdiary.com

How do you define yourself when others have already decided who you are? Six years ago, when Camden Daniels came back from war without his younger brother, no one in the small town of Alba, Colorado, would forgive him—especially his father. He left, swearing never to return. But a desperate message from his father brings it all back. The betrayal. The pain. And the need to go home again. But home is where the one person he still loves is waiting. Willow. The one woman he can never have, because there are secrets buried in Alba that are best left in the dark... Great and Precious Things is a heart-wrenching forbidden romance about family, betrayal, and ultimately how far we’re willing to go on behalf of those we love and who need us most.

Little Bear is looking for the most precious thing in the world. She finds a beautiful blue stone, a fluffy feather and a soft rose, but Mummy Bear says she can think of something even more precious. What could it be?

2022 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction Shortlist A humorous coming-of-age novel-in-stories and a sharp-edged look at how silence can shape a life, from the winner of the Journey Prize. A Chatelaine Summer Reads pick. “But wait, what happened to the girl?” “I don’t know,” I say. I don’t tell him that what will happen to her is what happens to every girl. Bright, hilarious, and sensitive fourteen-year-old Nina doesn’t say anything when her best friend begins to pull away, or when her crush on her English teacher intensifies. She doesn’t say anything when her mother tries to match her up with local Halifax Indian boys unfamiliar with her Saved by the Bell references, or when her worried father starts reciting Hindu prayers outside her bedroom door. (“How can your dad be happy when his only daughter is unsettled?”) And she won’t speak of the incident in high school that changes the course of her life. The Most Precious Substance on Earth tells stories of Nina’s life from the nineties to present day, when she returns to the classroom as a high school teacher with a haunting secret. And whether she’s pushing herself to deliver speeches at Toastmasters meetings, struggling through her MFA program, enduring the indignities of online dating, or wrestling with how to best guide her students, she will discover that the past is never far behind her. Darkly funny, deeply moving, unsettling, and at times even shocking, Shashi Bhat’s irresistible novel-in-stories examines the fraught relationships between those who take and those who have something taken. The Most Precious Substance on Earth is a sharp-edged and devastating look at how women are conditioned to hide their trauma and suppress their fear, loneliness, and anger, and an unforgettable portrait of how silence can shape a life.

A slight glance at the contents of this volume will convey an idea of its character and design. It is intended to be, not so much a systematic treatise of theology, as the companion, in his hours of devotional, meditative retirement, of the experienced and spiritual Christian. The truths which it contains, and the style in which they are presented, are perhaps more adapted to those peculiar seasons in the Christian experience of the believer, in which profound discussion and labored thought would not only be distasteful, but out of place. Bearing with him the volume in his sequestered walks with God, or making it the sharer of his temporary seclusion from the active engagements of life, the "precious things of God" which it unfolds may serve to shed the perfume and the luster of Jesus' name and work around his lone and pensive path cheering solitude, soothing grief, and dissolving doubt, depression, and gloom. Many and costly are the precious things of God not enumerated in this work; blessed are they who, from the volume of their personal and spiritual experience, can complete the catalogue, and supply the Author's lack. These pages address themselves pointedly and strongly to that essential principle of vital religionthe experimental. We really know as much of the gospel of Christ, and of the Christ of the gospel, as by the power of the Holy Spirit we have the experience of it in our souls. All other acquaintance with Divine truth must be regarded as merely intellectual, theoretical, speculative, and of little worth. But, to apprehend, in some measure, the value, the glory, and the preciousness of the Lord Jesus, and, as a consequence, to esteem Him above all good, to reflect His image, to labor in His service, and to be found preparing and waiting for the happy moment described with such exquisite beauty by Doddridge, and as he only could portray it, "That blessed interview, how sweet! To fall transported at His feet; Raised in His arms, to see His face Through the full beamings of His grace!"this, this is spiritual LIFE. And, compared with the heart-experience of this, when we take a close, realizing survey of eternity, all other subjects of study and employments of time appear but solemn trifling with our destiny. The Author regrets, that to the discussion of themes so transcendently important and precious he should have brought so much human feebleness and infirmity. His work, planned amid the happy tranquility and repose of a long and warmly-attached pastorate, and finished amid the scenes of anxiety, excitement, and toil incident to a new and more extended sphere of ministerial labor, has necessarily been exposed to much that was unfavorable to that matured thought, careful composition, and literary finish which he considers efforts of this kind should possess. His hope, however, is, that, imperfect as is his production, the Divine Spirit may yet deign to bless it to the saving of precious souls, give it acceptance with the Church of Christ, and use it for the advancement of the cause of God and truth in the world,and the glory shall be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, three Persons in the One God, world without end. Amen.